Chapter 167: Academy’s Entrance Final Phase [7]

Chapter 167: Chapter 167: Academy’s Entrance Final Phase [7]

One of the chains found Lain’s legs in the dark.

I pulled the instant the link closed.

There was no power struggle this time.

The override had already decided the tension, and the energy I had taken from the elongated woman and the pale-eyed support made the difference.

Lain’s boots left the floor.

"Huh?"

I dragged him.

I climbed the broken face of the building Giselle stood on, using every handhold and every length of rebar while the white-haired support slammed into ledges, window frames, and protruding concrete on the way up.

His hands scrabbled at the bindings around his ankles, unsteady now, strength still there but the angle and the constant impact kept him from tearing free the way he had on the open avenue.

Far below and farther out, other units were still playing Fulcrum and Fury.

Small flashes of power, distant shouts, the occasional bloom of fire or kinetic force.

None of it mattered.

The only score that counted was the one currently arcing toward the red portal with my primary anchor inside it.

I reached the roof.

Giselle raised one hand, already shifting her grip.

I didn’t give her the chance to finish the thought.

I planted my feet, put everything the fifty-percent override and the energy still allowed into the line, and launched Lain like a thrown spear straight toward the rupture.

Giselle’s attention snapped from Gianna to her own support in a single clean adjustment.

The telekinetic hold that had been carrying Gianna toward the portal transferred.

Lain’s trajectory bent.

He stopped being a projectile and became a problem she had to solve.

I jumped.

Muscles answered at the absolute edge of what the override and the circulation could give.

I cleared the rooftop edge, hung in the open air above the district, and threw every chain I had left toward the dark shape that was still falling.

Catch her.

Gianna’s eyes were glassy.

Her hands reached and missed by inches.

Fuck.

The links should have passed her.

They moved on their own.

The override finished the catch I had started.

Gianna’s nose started bleeding the moment she seized the nearest chain with her power and pulled herself into the binding.

The contact locked.

[Primary Anchor Restored]

[Channel integrity: Re-establishing]

[Emotional charge: Critical — Protective spike]

[Host regulation: Elevated but holding]

I hauled her in hard, felt her weight come onto the line, then deliberately severed every chain the instant she was clear of the portal’s pull.

She dropped the last few metres under her own control and hit a lower rooftop in a controlled roll that still looked like it hurt.

Giselle moved first.

A red chain, thicker than mine, denser, the same family of technique she had copied in the hall, snapped across the open air toward my chest.

I Fracture-Stepped out of the line and let it tear a chunk out of the building behind me instead.

"That was stronger than mine," I said.

Giselle spun the red length once around her wrist, the motion almost idle.

"Impressive."

I didn’t answer.

My attention had already flicked to the lower roof where Gianna was pushing herself upright, blood still tracking from her nose, markers flickering back to life around her hands.

The weight that had been sitting on my chest since the throw lightened by a fraction.

"So..." I rolled my shoulders, feeling the yellow still burning at the edges of my vision.

"Time to end this, I guess?"

She moved first again.

The red chain came in a low, sweeping arc meant to take the legs.

I skipped the distance with Fracture Step, reappeared inside her reach, and threw a blue link at her wrist in the same breath.

The chain closed.

It broke on contact.

Not torn by strength.

Simply refused.

Like the binding had tried to latch onto something that did not accept foreign authority.

Oh.

Submission would not land on her.

Giselle’s eyes narrowed a fraction, the first real adjustment I had seen from her since the biscuit.

She advanced without comment, red chain shortening into a denser, closer weapon.

I met her with what I had left: residual speed, the elongated woman’s borrowed flexibility still fading in the joints, and the knowledge that every clean technique I had trained under Jenna would glance off her the same way the first link had.

She was strong.

Not just theatrical.

Just precise in the way of someone who had been trained under Draven and had never needed to raise her voice to end a fight.

Every exchange cost me ground.

A feint high forced a block that left my ribs open.

The red chain hit the same place Lain had already bruised and lit fresh fire under the skin.

I answered with a net of blue links that should have fouled her footwork.

She stepped through them like they were a suggestion instead of force.

"You’re adapting faster than I expected," she said, almost conversational, while her next strike drove me back another two metres.

"Most supports freeze when the primary leaves their radius."

"I’m not most"

The red chain cracked the air beside my ear.

"The Empress line does not watch polite drills."

I stopped trying to bind her and started trying to survive her.

Fracture Step became a stutter of short displacements.

Chains became trip lines and blunt impacts instead of restraints.

Once I managed to close the distance far enough to put an elbow into her guard, she took it on the forearm and returned a palm strike that made the fifty-percent override flare in warning.

She was about to win.

Because I have nothing to drain.

The arithmetic was simple.

Her technique was not.

Another thirty seconds of the same exchange and the only thing left on this roof would be a hard-track fulcrum on his back and a daughter of Sector 5 writing the final note for the proctors.

I stopped giving her the exchange she expected.

When the next red line came in, I stepped into it instead of away.

The chain scored a burning line across my shoulder.

I ignored it, closed the last metre on pure commitment, and caught her by the front of her jacket with both hands.

She had time to look surprised.

I opened my mouth against hers, not a kiss, not anything the board would file under intimacy, and pulled.

[Core Absorption Activated]